Why Is Juror 8 Important In 12 Angry Men

In Twelve Angry Men, juror 8 was a necessity to the trial as he was the only thing in the way of the deliberation immediately ending on a guilty verdict, six pages into the play. Despite his undeniable skill in cross-examination and presentation of ideas, several of the tactics juror 8 used to instill doubt in the other jurors would be detrimental to an actual deliberation process. The most indisputable example of this is during Act 2 of the play. Jurors 8 and 3 had been clashing throughout the entire act until juror 3 finally reached his limit on page 42 of Act 2, shouting, “You come in here with your heart bleeding out all over the floor about slum kids and injustice and you make up all these wild stories, and you’ve got some soft-hearted old

I’m getting real sick of you. What’s the matter with you people? This kid is guilty! He’s got to burn! We’re letting him slip through our fingers.” At this point, the most beneficial thing for the case would be to shut him down and redirect the conversation because going in this direction of discussion adds nothing to the deliberation. But this does not happen. Juror 8 knows he can use juror 3’s emotion to his advantage. So he, right after, goes along with juror 3, saying, “I’m sorry for you.”, “What it must feel like to want to pull the switch!”, and “You’re a sadist…”, continuously escalating the situation. By this point juror 3 is raging, telling him to shut up. Now on page 43 of Act 2, is when juror 8 delivers his finishing statement, “You want to see this boy die because you personally want it—not because of the facts. You are a beast. You disgust me.”, effectively driving juror 3 into lunging and screaming, “Let me go! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” In this way, juror 3 creates a good argument as to why saying I’ll kill you is not always meant literally. However, the issue is that he created this evidence himself. He did not use personal experiences, or the experiences of others to reinforce his